Director Niels Arden Oplev gets his U.S. independent debut after his international success in season 2008/2009 with adapting the first part of Stieg Larsson's Millinium trilogy "The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo". In "Dead Man Down" the director gets the full treat by U.S. producer Neal H. Moritz with a 30 Millions U.S. Dollars production budget to translate a solidly written screenplay by former actor J.H. Wyman and utterly fails bring thrilling suspense to screen.The overall ready-to-go cast around Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace and Terrence Howard with further supports from Isabelle Huppert, playing Rapace's mother, F. Murray Abraham, giving an alibi mentor to Farrell's character and a pale looking Dominic Cooper, who seems to be in the fading from the picture. Niels Arden Oplev takes no chances in a collaboration with cinematographer Paul Cameron. The picture's coverage comes out stale by using uninspired slow-dolly-shots on horizontal planes in stretched-out inactive dialogue scenes to give "Dead Man Down" unnecessary dramatic flavors without reaching any momentum of suspense.When the opening scene rolls out, there was still some credit to follow the story-line with interest before the director loses his grip on the motion picture. The cast left only most of the time with dead beats of staring eye-lines into nothing. The chemistry of main characters of Victor and Beatrice are hardly translated into on-screen actions. They mostly stand or seat in an fair interpreted production design by Danish-import Niels Sejer, presenting the usual gritty New York settings with no surprises. Again Director Niels Arden Oplev makes no use of the production value giving to him. Angles on the shot list come out unbalanced. Actors look confused on-screen, creates the feeling that "Dead Man Down" hardly came together in rough-cut-stage.Producers and writer disappointed with the outcome of "Dead Man Down", delaying the preliminary release date from Fall 2012 to Spring 2013. Experienced French editor Frederic Thoraval gets brought to fix what can be fixed, which is usually the all familiar sledge hammer treatment in the final sequence of the picture. Unfortunately by then, the specter does hardly care what happens to the characters in the resolution scene with no suspense given. The forecast of Niels Arden Oplev already finishing his director's job on a remake of the mediocre thriller "Flatliners" from 1990 for Columbia Pictures seems to be in vain.

DEAD MAN DOWN is another generic crime thriller starring Colin Farrell, who has lost a lot of the early respect I had for him back when he was making an effort in the likes of MINORITY REPORT and TIGERLAND. Nowadays he stars in stuff like this and the TOTAL RECALL remake, both fluff pieces with nothing new to say.DEAD MAN DOWN starts on a high note with a profane shoot-out full of violent spectacle. After this it soon slows down to a crawl by introducing a quasi-romantic relationship between a taciturn Farrell and a struggling Noomi Rapace, sporting one of those Hollywood facial scars which is supposed to make her disfigured but rather looks like someone drew a line on her face with red Biro.The two characters are set on a path of revenge against stock bad guy Terrence Howard but boy, do they take a long time to get there. Although book-ended by quite effective moments, the long slow mid-section of DEAD MAN DOWN is what lets this film down quite considerably. The script just isn't up to much and the characters feel clunky and dull as a result; the viewer can never get involved in their story. It's a pity, as this is another case of Hollywood's wasted potential.

This is an example of a movie with great acting and a director with a great understanding of his actors. The dialogue is on point, the couple gets the theme of the movie perfectly, and the director shoots them to make the most out of each scene.This movie's undertow is the plot. Far from gripping, it serves no purpose other than to propel the dialogue further, and often take the characters into silly places. Silly places are fine as long as they don't strike you as silly.However, that said, it is fun, and something you can relax into. It will never steer you wrong where it counts.

There is always a big gamble with revenge flicks : these stories have been told so many times…it takes more than a few big names to make them memorable. Characters, dialogue, tension, subplots, impressive kills...If used properly, these elements will differentiate any formulaic revenge flick from the lot. While Dead Man Down is not a terrible movie, it's just another title that falls in the loop of quickly-released and just-as-quickly-forgotten anonymous revenge flicks.The storyline makes for a synopsis a thousand times more interesting than the actual product resulting from its lazy execution. We've got two parallel quests for revenge, and neither of them is ever able to capture any sense of depth or avoid clichés, thanks to typical sequences of Farrell watching 8mm tapes of an afternoon in the park with the wife and daughter, where they just laugh and do every possible thing to look like the perfect little family. The other quest for revenge, which involves Noomi Rapace's character, stays on the shelf for nearly the entire runtime, which makes it hard for the average and not overly sensitive viewer to become emotionally involved (or to simply give a rat's ass about it) at any point.The very few action sequences are poorly shot. There is not one moment where Colin Farrell is believable as a Hungarian mobster, nor is Noomi Rapace as a French woman that is both physically and emotionally scarred, thanks to the silly accents that both actors clumsily mimic. And while the acting may be Dead Man Down's strongest point (that says a lot), you can feel the cast is trying hard to bring some life to these frustratingly empty characters, especially Terrence Howard.It is a very typical story, and for it to become something special, its basics had to be strong. And it is not the case. Instead of working on its characters, Dead Man Down prioritizes clichéd rubbish visual elements to add some sort of an intrigue feel that never materializes. From the picture puzzle to the bars on the "f"s, the ensemble feels like it was written to feel way more complex than it actually is.Visually, Dead Man Down is equal to its script : we've seen this a thousand times already. A greyish tone to give it some sort of gritty edge, bland directing lacking anything fancy that is never able to generate any kind of dramatic tension whatsoever. It's all tame. Not awful, just awfully tame.This will be on the shelves of video stores for a month, and next times you will see a copy of Dead Man Down, it will be in 5 years, in the five-dollar movie bin at Wal-Mart, lost under a pile of similarly forgettable products.